Amidst all the other crafty projects I’ve been working on, I’ve been trying to get my office all designed up. It would be nice to have ONE room finished and inspiring in the house. I’ve also decided the only way to keep everything straight and really feel your vision come together with interior design is to create style boards/design guides whatever you want to call them. This definitely helps me get my brain together and know how I want the pieces to all fit.

So I finally got this style guide together for my Coral, Gold, and White, with touches of mint, office:

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll already know that Mr. Project just finished my desk:

And I found this awesome console table (that I’m going to paint bright coral)

And my bench seat is all ready for cushions and pillows!

And my shelves are organized and decorated!

So now all I have to do for the final reveal is paint my cane-back chair that I found at a local consignment store:

Then get my rug (ordered), pillows and cushions sewn, and a few last minute accessories and I’ll be done! I can’t wait to share the reveal pics (and be finished with one room in the house).

I went to the UV Parade in June and every home just kind of started blending into the next. I wasn’t overly excited about this house based on the exterior images I had seen, but walking into this home was a breath of fresh air.

When I walked through it was so crowded, so I came back a few days later right at opening with my big camera and snapped pictures of my favorite parts of this gorgeous home. So lets just go through them… I love me a black/navy front door, and the organization of the windows/trim in this entry is so beautiful.

I couldn’t sleep last night. Normally that’s not a bad thing on New Year’s Eve, however it was way past midnight and I was the only one awake. Restless.

I hadn’t thought much about my goals for this year. It seems as though our lives have been on hold for the past 8 months. In transition (how many times have I said that?). Waiting for our new life to begin. Holding pattern. Stress. How can you start a fresh year when you’re on hold? I still don’t know. I still feel overwhelmed by the clutter and chaos that surrounds me. I’ve never really battled with depression, only during my pregnancies to some extent – hormone related no doubt. But being in transition seems to bring out the worst in my psyche. These past few months I’ve battled with some form of sporadically crippling depression. It comes and goes in waves, sometimes for a few days and other days I’m amazingly productive. But it’s there kind of hiding waiting to sneak up on me. “Today’s going to be a productive day!” I know it, and then, BAM! it’s there, and I can hardly function. I’ve never dealt with anything like this before so I don’t know what to call it, or how to manage it (other than dysfunction). I’m just clinging to the hope that it’s due to the transient nature of our lives, and once I’m on more solid footing and in an environment more conducive to creativity (not piled high with boxes and cabinets and nearly everything I own still in boxes) that it will disappear.

So not feeling particularly motivated to make any changes just yet, and feeling as though I should just keep eating my feelings (like I’ve been doing for the past few months), I stumbled upon an instagram of someone’s One Little Word. Now I’ve never done a OLW, I didn’t even know who the founding person was who started this – I just found out this morning that it’s Ali Edwards who started it several years ago. Basically the premise is that you choose a word – like a little spirit guide – to help you in your personal progression through the year. To help you focus your intentions, desires, goals, and actions into one central unifying principle that you are working towards.

Thinking about this idea late at night really just hit a spark with me. I could choose a word, I could find my path again – I could even create a free printable to help me execute my word (see below!). But what word to choose?

What do I name this battle that was I fighting? I thought “Organize” is a great word. If there’s anything I need right now, it’s Organization. But that seemed pretty shallow for my needs. Like a bandaid to fix an artery. I thought “Health” because building a house is kind of like building a baby, it takes everything out of you and I could really use focus on my health to start getting things in order (also see eating emotions above). But I instinctually knew that this wasn’t right either. I was trying to heal symptoms and and not the actual problem.

After much pondering, I realized that my symptoms were all caused by my life being off-kilter. Not just my physical environment, but everything. I had set myself up so much to be living a temporary life during this house-build, that I never found my center. I just knew if I could hold on till we were settled in the new house that everything would work itself out. Except the design and build took longer than I thought, and before I knew it I was spinning on the wrong axis and life was spiraling out of control. I can handle a little chaos, even a lot of chaos, but it just got to be too much, and I didn’t know how to correct. And thats when the depression came. Endless cycles of stress eating, stress insomnia, stress stressing, stress shopping, stress crying, stress iphoning. And I knew what I needed more than anything else was to find my center again. Throw off all the disfuctional coping mechanisms and be incredibly deliberate in my actions.

So today on this glorious first day of a brand new year, I’m starting fresh. Mr. Project cleaned the house this morning, soon the boxes and cabinets will also be gone, and I have a clean slate to make choices that will reinforce my decision to find my center. I’m going to edit and print my 2014 Planner, and be as organized and cleanly as I can. Plan menus, the works! I’m going to look at food not as a drug to numb my stress, but choose to eat things that bring me health and clarity of mind. I’m going to be far more deliberate in loving my husband and children and when/how I choose to interact with my phone/social media outlets. And probably most important, I’m going to reconnect with my inner self, and my spiritual self. No more excuses, just using my time as wisely as I can to make sure my actions are inline with my One Little Word.

I created this “focus matrix” not just as a goal sheet, but a prioritizing of aspects of my life, and how to reinforce my “One Little Word” in each of those areas. I filled this out by keeping my OLW in the center box as my “fixed point”. Then I asked myself what areas of my life do I need to focus on and make better and how do they relate to my OLW. For mine, I chose:

1.Soul

2. Relationship with Spouse

3. Family

4. Body

5. Environment

6. Spiritual

And in each of those areas, I carefully thought of ways that I can apply my “one little word”. I hung this above my desk, and am going to use it as a daily reminder of my desire to find my center, and the types of choices that will lead me towards the change that I need to see this year.

This form is available as a free download. I challenge you to choose a OLW use it as a guide to bring about change in your life. Click on the image below to download. If you like it, please leave a comment, I’d love to hear how it’s working for you.

I feel like my goals now have a “fixed point” instead of being independent ideas of what I want to do or be this year. And I know that focusing on that fixed point will lead to greater success towards getting to where I want to be.

I created this saying for the printable form, and decided I should design some printable art version of it, to hang up and motivate me. So I drew this up and printed the black ink it on a piece of ombre card stock (MME Cut & Paste Adorbs “Story” Recollect Paper).

If you’d like to print it out, I’ve provided a free download PDF (download by clicking on the image below) that can be printed on plain or colored paper.